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Well they are "just" HD44780 driven LCD displays (which are sold on eBay pretty cheap these days). Back in the day when every machine had a parallel port we use
by Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
Well they are "just" HD44780 driven LCD displays (which are sold on eBay pretty cheap these days). Back in the day when every machine had a parallel port we used to just drive them directly bit banging out what we wanted. These days you can just slap an Arduino inbetween one and a USB port and jobs pretty much done.
- Slartie 4y agoHaha, yeah, I have fond memories of these displays. Got my hands onto one by accident as a kid, but didn't have any software to drive it, so I wrote me some software to drive those on the parallel port for display of CPU and RAM usage, number of mails in inbox, fan speeds and stuff. That program even gained a certain popularity in the case-modding scene, it was a hideous pile of crappy Visual Basic 4.0 code called "just another LCD software" or "jaLCDs".
- eddieroger 4y agoThat triggered a memory of when I decided to put a mini-tower PC in my trunk to may MP3s, and bought one of these displays off eBay so I could see a very basic menu and some song info. 4x40 characters of greatness propped up in the empty bay of my Camry. Those were the days.
- ckozlowski 4y agoYup! They're very flexible. I remember these units too. Back in 2002-2005, I worked for a small system integrator. We built turn-key appliances for software vendors. Firewalls, security appliances, etc. We'd work with chassis manufacturers to add cutouts for these units on the front of 1U and 2U servers to provide for an interface without needing to hook up a console cart. Same as you might see on a Dell or HP. Really neat seeing these still in use!